Recent Travel and Training

I’ve grown increasingly less enamored with social media. 

 

In years past, I would often share pictures and accounts of my travels and the classes I teach on Facebook.  I’m spending less and less time on that platform these days.  I’ve never had an Instagram account. I rarely use LinkedIn.  I stopped posting my articles on Twitter last year because I don’t want to spend time on a platform that basically exists to allow strangers to argue with each other.

 

I really enjoyed the early days of social media, but now it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort to spend much time there.  Besides that, given my cancer diagnosis, I’m not interested in acquiring new romantic relationships or new business opportunities.  Curating the “perfect” life on social media seems far less important as I’m no longer interested in looking for dates or showing off how great my business is doing.

 

Folks have been asking me about my life, so I decided to do give you all one big update here rather than drizzle out daily Facebook photos, reels, and posts.  Here’s what’s been going on in the first half of 2026.

 

I mentioned the cancer, so let’s lead with that.  No immediate worries currently.  Median survival (from metastatic diagnosis to death) for my type of prostate cancer is 30 months, even with the most aggressive treatments possible.  I am not doing those treatments and I’m currently on month 29 since my cancer has spread.  I feel good.  I’m not going to die (at least from cancer) in the next few months.  My most recent blood tests and scans show that the experimental treatment protocol I underwent last fall seemed to have helped me.  

 

I got the results of my most recent blood tests last week.  The cancer is still there, but it doesn’t seem to be growing very quickly right now.  I think I bought myself some time with the unconventional  treatment protocol I underwent.  My numbers are slightly higher than they were on my last test in March, but they are about 50X lower than where they were last year at this time.

The numbers are moving in a bad direction, but they are getting there extremely slowly.

 

I’m in good spirits about the cancer stuff, it’s just challenging to make plans when my future is so uncertain.  Everything about this disease is a roller coaster ride. It seems like life exists in six month intervals, perpetually waiting for blood test and scan results to better guess how long I’m going to be around.

 

As of now, I’m fine.  I know that won’t be the case forever.  Until things get appreciably worse, I’m going to keep teaching and traveling.  

 

I’ve been a busy guy.  In the time frame between January and the end of June, I’ve taught 15 days of classes to 257 students.  I’ve explored eight different states and seven foreign countries.  I’ve taken 18 commercial flights and spent 63 nights out of town in hotels or AirBnB rentals.  I read 49 books.  I wrote 60 articles for my website and 21 extra articles for my Patreon subscribers.  I consulted with one defense attorney as an expert witness in a self defense case where the defendant was charged with murder.

 

 

I’ve been spending the winters in Mexico for the past five years.  That’s where I started the year.  Playa del Carmen is my second home and I really enjoy the lifestyle down there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got back home in mid-January and recorded podcasts with both Rich Nance and the guys from Green Ops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of January, I went to Miami for five days to help a friend recover from her surgery.  While there, we visited the site of the 1986 Miami FBI shootout.  When I started my police career, this incident was less than a decade old and it informed almost every aspect of my police academy training. 

 

Now lots of “Gun Culture 2.0” folks have no idea about the event’s historical significance.  I’m gathering info for a future article about the incident’s relevance to current firearms training doctrine.  We can’t forget the blood shed by our tactical forebears.

 

 

 

Take a look at the photo above.  The Miami gunfight took place across the street from this sign.  The suspects’ vehicle came to rest near that small mulch bed at the edge of the photo to the left of where the car is parked in the driveway.  The two agents who engaged from the longest distance fired their weapons from right about where I am standing.

 

In this photo I’m carrying a Glock 19 and a spare magazine filled with bonded hollow points.  I wonder if the outcome of the 1986 gunfight would have been different if all the agents had access to the same firearm/ammunition that this old retired cop carries with him on a daily basis.

 

After I got home from Miami, I immediately left to spend a couple weeks with long time friends who live part of the year on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic.  I’ve visited them on the island almost every year since 2013.  They own a beautiful house right on the beach.  It’s a great place to relax and write.

 

 

 

 

When I returned from the DR, I taught my first classes for the year.  Two sold-out classes (shotgun and close range gunfighting) hosted by Aqil Qadir in Tennessee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next week, I co-taught a “Near and Far” class in Bastrop, Texas with Jeff Gonzales.  It was a very unique class, but both Jeff and I were disappointed in the turn out.  We didn’t get nearly the number of students that we expected.  As neither Jeff nor I wanted to cancel the class, we went ahead an taught for the small number of students who signed up.  Due to lack of interest, we probably won’t teach this class again.

 

For the last year I’ve been driving to most of my classes instead of flying.  I’m building extra days into the itinerary so I can do some exploring in the areas near where I’m teaching.  Despite the lack of students in the Near and Far class, I got to explore nearby Bastrop, Texas.  The town is only a little over an hour drive away from my house, but I hadn’t visited before.

 

I got in a day early and spent some time at the 602 Brewery and a bookshop owned by an author I really enjoy.  Ryan Holiday (the stoicism guy) owns The Painted Porch.  It’s a bookstore stocked only with books he likes.  It was a cool experience and I only took five new books home with me.

 

 

 

 

Later in March, I flew to Ohio and taught two full classes (Extreme Close Quarters Gunfighting and Tactical First Aid at Blackwing Shooting Center.  I flew right back home so I could teach a couple of knife fighting classes at the Rangemaster Tactical Conference in Dallas.  I ended up teaching 55 students across the two classes.  I was also able to attend several classes from other instructors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ended March by seeing Journey in concert in Austin.  That was one of my favorite bands when I was in high school.  All of the band members are in their 70s now, so I wanted to see them before they stopped touring.  They put on a great show.

 

 

 

April started out with an appearance on The Way is in Training Podcast with Matt Little.

 

On the weekend of April 11th, I drove to Louisiana to teach a Close Quarters shooting instructor development class for 15 people.  I got in a day early to hang out with my host Eric Hite.  Eric took me on an excellent food tour of New Orleans and then we visited the site where the river breached the flood wall during Hurricane Katrina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the way home from Louisiana, I stopped off and saw the birthplace of Texas Independence and the San Jacinto national monument.

 

 

The following weekend I taught a close quarters gunfighting class and a cane fighting class at Karl Rehn’s Texas A-Zone range.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I got home from Karl’s place, some of the cool kids in the gun world came to Austin and I got to hang out with them.

 

The day started out by picking up the ineffable Tiffany Johnson for lunch. I got to introduce her to the Texas staple food of “Frito Pie” at a quirky downtown diner before we took a rainy driving tour of “Dirty 6th,” the bat bridge, Rainey street, and South Congress.

Because we are both nerdy introverts, neither of us took a single photo during our excursions. That’s probably for the best. I don’t want Dr. Tiffany’s stellar reputation besmirched by associating with a degenerate like me.

Then it was dinner followed by a comedy show at Rogan’s Comedy Mothership with Chuck and Kristin Pressburg. Because Chuck and I are nerdy introverts, neither of us took a single photo.

Fortunately Kristin was smart enough to take our picture outside the Mothership to make things properly Facebook official.

It was a fun day. Thanks to Tiff, Chuck, Kristin, and Misha for the awesome company

 

 

That takes us to the first of May, when I took a two week trip to Central and Eastern Europe.  I visited Germany, Poland, Austria, Czechia, and Hungary.  When I get caught up on everything, I’ll write a few separate posts about my adventures there.

 

 

When I got home from Europe, I flew up to teach in Ohio and Indiana for two weeks.  I started by running a 50-person series of scenarios designed to test the armed school staff I teach in Indiana.  We had four scenarios integrating armed school staff, police, fire, EMS, and emergency management.  Everyone seemed happy with their performance.  The following day Bryan McKean and I taught our “bag gun” class to 14 students at Blackwing near Columbus.

 

I had to teach the following weekend in Southern Ohio.  Instead of flying home, I stayed around Columbus for the week and visited some old friends.  I also got to do some hiking at the places I used to love to walk when I lived there.

 

 

 

My class in Southern Ohio was a Close Quarters Gunfighting instructor class at The Tactical Defense Institute (TDI).  TDI is where I started my commercial teaching back in 1999.  I hadn’t taught there since 2018.  It was nice to be back and have a full class with great weather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I got back from Ohio, I had a couple weeks at home.  Fortunately three sets of old friends were visiting Austin during that time frame so I got to spend some time with them having fun and eating some awesome food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While having fun with friends, I also finished up a six-month post-graduate certificate in interdisciplinary psychedelic studies from the Ohio State University. 

 

 

I finished out the month of June by taking Dustin Solomon’s Class “Building Shooters- Brain-Based Tactical Training Design.”  I really enjoyed the class and will be sharing my class notes with my higher-level Patreon supporters in a couple weeks.

 

That’s the summary of the first half of 2026 for me.  I just got back from a trip to Peru.  I’ll soon be starting another two-week training road trip through the Midwest and southern United States.  At the end of next month, I’ll be going down to Mexico again for another short adventure.

 

I’ll write up my Peru trip soon and will give you an article summarizing the remainder of 2026 in a few months.  Until then, I hope to see you in some of my upcoming classes.